1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to the field of wireless communications, and more particularly, to a method and system for establishing a Wireless Fidelity (Wi-Fi) direct (WFD) connection in a Wi-Fi direct network environment.
2. Description of the Related Art
A Wi-Fi direct (WFD) network is a network system suggested by the Wi-Fi Alliance that enables Wi-Fi devices to be connected to each other in a peer-to-peer fashion without participating in a home network, an office network, or a hot-spot network. For setting up a connection, a Wi-Fi device (i.e., a searching Wi-Fi device) performs device discovery to discover Wi-Fi devices in a Wi-Fi direct network environment. During the device discovery, the searching Wi-Fi device sends a probe request frame through a pre-defined channel. The probe request frame includes information such as Peer to Peer (P2P) Information Element (IE), P2P wildcard Service Set IDentifier (SSID), wildcard SSID, Destination Address, Device type and Device IDentifier (ID). The other Wi-Fi devices in the WFD network environment listen to the probe request frame transmitted through the pre-defined channel. Each of the other Wi-Fi devices determines whether the information in the probe request frame matches the search criteria. If the match is found, then the discovered Wi-Fi device(s) sends a probe response frame with device description to the searching Wi-Fi device.
Upon discovery of the Wi-Fi device, the searching Wi-Fi device performs service discovery with the discovered Wi-Fi device to obtain services supported by the discovered Wi-Fi device. During the service discovery, the searching Wi-Fi device sends a Generic Advertisement Service (GAS) initial request to the discovered Wi-Fi device. In response, the discovered Wi-Fi device sends a GAS initial response with service information to the searching Wi-Fi device. Thereafter, the searching Wi-Fi device sets up a WFD connection with the discovered Wi-Fi device using device and service description obtained from the discovered Wi-Fi device.
The Wi-Fi devices negotiate their capabilities and establish a WFD session for sharing data with each other. When the data sharing is complete, the WFD connection between the Wi-Fi devices is terminated. A new WFD connection is established when the user of the Wi-Fi device wishes to again share data with the discovered Wi-Fi device. For establishing the WFD connection, the Wi-Fi device needs to perform discovery of the Wi-Fi device and discovery of services supported by the Wi-Fi device. This may lead to latency in re-establishing the WFD connection with the Wi-Fi device.